URLs du Jour

Proverbs 11:18
is another optimistic take on the benefits of being a good person.
It pays off, baby!

18 A wicked person earns deceptive wages,
but the one who sows righteousness reaps a sure reward.

The Proverbialist apparently never heard of "Virtue is its own
reward." Who said that, anyway? Ah, here it is:
John
Henry Newman (1801-1890), British clergyman, and all-around
smart guy. (And, according to
Wikipedia,
only one miracle short of sainthood.)

At Reason, Jacob Sullum has a simple request:
Another
Justice Like Gorsuch, Please. Jacob rebuts recent criticism from
"People for the American Way" (PFAW) that
Gorsuch is "a narrow-minded elitist who consistently votes in favor
of corporations and the powerful." Oh, yeah?

PFAW is echoing the criticism
of Democratic senators who worried, before Gorsuch was confirmed in
April 2017, that he was not inclined to stand up for "the little
guy." Gorsuch's record
during a decade on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit belied
that claim, and his 15 months on the Supreme Court provide further
evidence that he is not shy about defending the principles that
protect politically disfavored individuals from the whims of the
powerful.

In sharp contrast with the man who nominated him, Gorsuch worries about abuses of the government's power to take people's property "for public use." In June 2017, when the Court declined to hear a case that raised the question of whether a state can impose limits on the "just compensation" it owes for takings under the Fifth Amendment, Gorsuch, joined by Clarence Thomas, urged his colleagues to address that issue at the "next opportunity."

Left-wing hyperventilating is one of their less attractive traits.

And one thing they hyperventilate about most is Roe v. Wade;
for them, its legal authority is above the Constitution, its wisdom
above Socrates, and its holy truth far above anything in the Bible!

The decision itself is a poorly reasoned mess. It failed to mount a convincing case that the Constitution contains language that can be read as guaranteeing a woman’s right to abort her pregnancy. Nor have the subsequent courts that amended and extended Roe managed to come up with a constitutional justification; it’s all “emanations and penumbras” and similarly float-y language that did little to convince opponents that Roe v. Wade was a good or necessary ruling. Even many liberal supporters of a constitutional right to abortion have voiced concerns about the way the Burger Court got us there; those critics include Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Anyway, one of Micah's movie classifications is the "pop entertainment
patriotic film".

These movies are the most effective and insidious form of patriotic
agitprop, merely by nature of how entertaining they are and how
thoroughly the American exceptionalism is baked into every frame of
the spectacle.

The heroes overcome their obstacles not just because they are good but
because they are American. Because Americans are the coolest, toughest,
scrappiest, most ingenious, most practical, awesome, courageous, clear
eyes, full heart, can't lose.

Hackers want to destroy America? Not if John McClane has anything to say about it.

And, yes, one of his examples is Live Free or Die
Hard, a movie that did not even have one scene in New Hampshire.
I felt like demanding my ticket money back!

(Google sends me an LFOD alert for every mention of Live Free or
Die Hard. Google's AI is not all its cracked up to be.)

Anyway: Micah Mertes is deeply troubled and snide about any movie that might make
you even slightly grateful to be an American.

Recent immigration checkpoints along I-93 in New Hampshire, as well
as along neighboring Maine’s I-95, are an affront to our Live Free
or Die values as well as a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Given my long history of watching movies with menacing foreigh-accented
police state functionaries demanding
"Your
papers, please", I'm uncomfortable with this sort of thing too.
But, as even
Vox
notes: the checkpoints are probably legal.

On July 1, Senator Jeff Woodburn is kicking off an online campaign
for the “Live free or die” state to join Maine, Vermont, and
Massachusetts in legalizing marijuana. If re-elected, Woodburn plans
to file legislation to legalize, regulate, and tax cannabis in 2019.

Whatever, dude.

Senator Jeff is the current Democratic state senator from District
1, which is, like, the
entire
northern half of the state. He is
also
against mandatory motorcycle helmets, mandatory seat belt usage, bans on "assault weapons",
broad-based taxes, … Not bad for a Democrat.

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